Tuesday, 18 October 2016

I have completed 100 days of consecutive posting of my work on my Instagram page. It was challenging, rewarding and bewildering.

Initially, I began the event as a challenge to keep me practising drawing on a daily basis. The rules were that no matter how dodgy the sketches were, I had to put them on the page.

By day 10 I was exhausted. However, I am not one to start something and not finish it, so I began to expand upon and reinterpret the rules. All of my work including previous sketches I had not published before where now included. I was able to include not seen before sketches - rough as they were - of my trips to the US and Egypt that inspired my most recent paintings.

Even this was proving limiting as my sketch vault was not chock filled, so I began to show sketches and previews of my (then) current painting The Netjeru In New York City, something as a rule I tend not to do.

The entire project occurred whilst I was completing TNINYC, and this had pressures of its own. Do I slow down the process of creating the painting (which was already proving to be my most challenging and intricate work to date) to keep the momentum of the project going without missing a day?

On a magickal and initiatory level, I feel like something has been achieved. I found something to publish every day even on those days when I really, really did not want to play. Much emerged as a result of this, including revelatory feelings that were hidden away about my artwork, my skills as an artist, as well as some amazing sketches for new paintings which would never have been realised had I not embarked on this adventure.

The last 18 months have been quite an insular time for me, and in a state of semi reclusion it came to be that stagnation was lurking. The 100 days project shook me up and out of this, finishing on the day after an auspicious birthday and full moon.

Above is the image that got the most "likes" in my project - a statue of the Goddess Sekhmet from a video a friend took inside the Turin museum. (The statue is a different one I used as the model for Ruby Sekhmet last year and a different angle).

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

A long term vision, an inspired trip, Lawren Harris and echoes of previous paintings
The idea for The Netjeru In New York City has been gestating for some time. The process required another trip to NYC at the beginning of last year to complete the vision and pull the concept together.

The third and final New York related piece of The Netjeru In America series, the painting has been my most challenging and intricate to date, combining large scale and minute detail with the new process of gilding that I have been learning in the last 12 months.

The painting is a rendering of the New York Cityscape, with various Netjeru appearing on, in or above the buildings and landmarks that characterise New York City. The buildings also include 4 of the principal shrines of Ancient Kemet blended into the cityscape.

Buildings
I have chosen buildings that resonate with my idea for the piece, and also include iconic landmarks that had an impression on me for one reason or another during my visit(s) to the city so far. There are 21 in total. From left to right:

The apartment building that sits at the west entrance of Central Park and was featured in the film Ghostbusters

Commercial building

Woolworth building

Westin Hotel

Shrine of Pe

WTC waterfront building

St. Patrick's Cathedral

The Guggenheim Museum Of Art

Waldorf

Anonymous building

Shrine of Buto

Anonymous building 2

Empire State

Apartments in Chelsea

Shrine of Hierokonpolis

WTC waterfront building 2

Statue of liberty

WTC building 3

WTC waterfront 4

Shrine of Nekhen

World Trade Centre

Chrysler Building (Central Park)

The Netjeru
There are 32 Netjeru featured in the piece: 28 are depicted in anthropomorphic form, 1 in abstract form, 1 in animal form, and 2 in hieroglyphic form only. Every Netjer has Their hieroglyphic designation in an enclosing band (a device I have used from my earliest paintings), in this case a neon one.

The Netjeru along building tops and in the sky from left to right:

Ptah

Nut

Khepera

Heru

Khonsu

Nehebukau

Astoret

Sutekh

The Netjeru inside the "Netjer boxes" from left to right, start top and go down and return to top:

Renenutet

MehUrt

Wepwawet

Wadjet

Anpu

Hehu

Atum

Shu (name in hieroglyphs in Atum's hand)

Tefnut (name in hieroglyphs in Atum's hand)

NebtHt

Ausar

Auset

Amon Ra

Mut

Sokar

Maat

Nekhbet

Sobek

Djehuti

Bastet

Nefertum

Sekhmet

Geb

Artistic elements: Lawren Harris and 2 of my earlier worksSky
The skyscape in this painting was one of the earliest elements to dominate the artistic process. In fact, it was the first colour element to go on the canvas once the initial drawings were laid on.

I had experimented with different forms of layering and texture (including moulding paste) but felt like these were stepping too far away from the style I am developing with my paintings. A post on Instagram about the Boston Museum Of Fine Arts holding an exhibition of Lawren Harris paintings was the beginning of my resolving just how the sky would be detailed in the work.
I was able to get the precise layering of colours by measuring syringe loads of cerulean blue with degrees of titanium white (thank you Golden Paints new liquid format acrylics!)

The Netjer boxes
How would I render the boxes that some of the Netjeru are featured in? I had a clear idea that the pattern would correspond with the skyscape, but I was stumped for the colour almost the entire way through. It wasn't until I pondered why one of my former art works, The Ark Of Millions was repeatedly popping into my head that I began to take a closer look as to intuitively, why.
The distinctive colour that makes up the background to that work is an unusual one found in the tombs of Kings Horemheb and Ramses I, and I was able to mimic it by using a smalt hue / titanium white mix. By using a similar process of gradation that I used for the sky I then found my colour schema for the boxes.

Hieroglyphics
The hieroglyphs are rendered in a similar way to those featured in Ark Of Millions, and I thought initially that this was why it had been on my mind; but it was only the neon glow aspect that I was borrowing from that work. I could not figure out the colour fill for the glyphs until Material Immortality began appearing in my minds eye in a similar way. This painting was actually hanging up in my studio at the time, so it was very present in my everyday world. Again, the background colour was the beckoning element and so a cobalt green / titanium white mix is the colour that fills the glyphs in The Netjeru In New York City..

Gilding
I have been studying traditional iconography for well over a year now, and in fact viewed a rather extraordinary exhibition of icons here in Melbourne the week I left for the aforementioned trip to the United States. The traditional form of guiding I have learned has been applied for the first time in one of my own works with this painting.

The Ancient Kemetic And How It Manifests Today
Out of all of my paintings to date, I feel that this work encapsulates the fullstop (I am aware that I have not included one) at the end of the sentence written above.
NYC is one of the world's most sophisticated cities, an icon of the modern and perhaps a representative of what civilisation has become; to juxtapose this man made behemoth with the divine understandings of a culture long past seems at once pointless and intriguing concomittanlty. Can the divine be found in the extreme of civilisation that we have created? And how will it be / look when we find it?

If we can not find the divine in nature any more, then how will we find it?

I do believe that Whitley Strieber has devoted a large portion of his life exploring this. Most notably, Super Natural suggests what can happen when mechanics and materialism have cemented over our deeper understanding of being connected with nature and the wonders of what went before.

It was a fun process bringing this painting into being, and extremely intense. A much earlier idea to do separate little portraits of each Netjer has been realised in this piece, somehow without my consciously addressing the paradox of modern and ancient, before and after. Somehow this piece evolved that idea all on its own.

Original sketch for The Netjeru In New York City
February 2015

One of my favourite photos from the 2015 US trip
The Divine Goddess Sekhmet and me
Brooklyn Museum, February 2015

Setken

My lifelong fascination with Ancient Egypt aka Kemet, hence Kemetic; the Netjeru (The Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses) soul anatomy and Kemetic art and sculpture.
I write about my paintings on here too.
Other interests include bodybuilding (not written about here), aromatherapy, art and especially sacred art in all cultures (featured a lot).